Alternative Film Guide

One of the highlights of this year’s San Sebastián International Film Festival is a mouth-wateringly thorough Ernst Lubitsch Retrospective.

Besides the obligatory titles, such as the witty 1939 comedy of bright lights and Communism, Ninotchka, and the delightful 1934 version of The Merry Widow, the retrospective is also showcasing a large number of Lubitsch rarities (including a few fragments of mostly lost films), ranging from his earliest work in Germany — among them several Pola Negri vehicles and the gender-bending 1918 comedy Ich möchte kein Mann sein / I Don’t Want to Be a Man, starring the German Mary Pickford, Ossi Oswalda — to some of his little seen Hollywood films, such as the 1931 psychological drama Broken Lullaby / The Man I Killed, with Phillips Holmes and Nancy Carroll, and the 1930 Jeanette MacDonald-Jack Buchanan musical Monte Carlo.

Pickford herself can be seen in Rosita a 1923 costume comedy that, despite claims to the contrary, was quite popular in its day. (Pickford hated working with Lubitsch, and never forgave him.)

The retrospective is also screening a trailer of The Patriot, a 1928 silent drama starring Emil Jannings, Florence Vidor, and Lewis Stone. (The Patriot was considered completely lost until fairly recently. One reel or so was reportedly found in Portugal.)

The San Sebastián festival runs until Sept. 30.

List of Ernst Lubitsch films (including fragments and trailers) screened at San Sebastián:

• Als ich tot war / Wo ist mein Schatz
Germany • 1916

• Angel
USA • 1937

• Anna Boleyn
Germany • 1920

• Bluebeard’s Eighth Wife
USA • 1938

• Broken Lullaby / The Man I Killed
USA • 1932

• Carmen
Germany • 1918

• Cluny Brown
USA • 1946

• Das Weib des Pharao
Germany • 1922

• Das fidele Gefängnis / Ein fideles Gefängnis
Germany • 1917

• Der Blusenkönig
Germany • 1917

• Design for Living
USA • 1933

• Desire
Frank Borzage, (Ernst Lubitsch producer) • USA • 1936

• Die Augen der Mumie Mâ
Germany • 1918

• Die Austernprinzessin
Germany • 1919

• Die Bergkatze
Germany • 1921

• Die Flamme
USA • 1923

• Die Puppe
Germany • 1919

• Ernst Lubitsch in Berlin
Robert Fischer • Germany • 2006

• Eternal Love
USA • 1929

• Forbidden Paradise
USA • 1924

• Heaven Can Wait
USA • 1943

• Ich möchte kein Mann sein
Germany • 1918

• If I Had a Million
Ernst Lubitsch (The Clerk), Norman Taurog, Stephen Roberts, Norman McLeod, James Cruze, William A. Seiter, H. Bruce Humberstone • USA • 1932

• Kohlhiesels Töchter
Germany • 1920

• Lady Windermere’s Fan
USA • 1925

• Madame Dubarry
Germany • 1919

• Meyer aus Berlin
Germany • 1919

• Monte Carlo
USA • 1930

• Ninotchka
USA • 1939

• One Hour with You
Ernst Lubitsch, George Cukor • USA • 1932

• Paramount on Parade
Ernst Lubitsch (Origin of the Apache, A Park in Paris, The Rainbow Revels), Dorothy Arzner, Otto Brower, Edmund Goulding, Victor Heerman, Edwin H. Knopf, Rowland V. Lee, Lothar Mendes, Victor Schertzinger, Edward Sutherland, Frank Tuttle • USA • 1930

• Romeo und Julia im Schnee
Germany • 1920

• Rosita
USA • 1923

• Schuhpalast Pinkus
Germany • 1916

• So This Is Paris
USA • 1926

• Sumurun
Germany • 1920

• That Uncertain Feeling
USA • 1941

• The Love Parade
USA • 1929

• The Marriage Circle
USA • 1924

• The Merry Widow
USA • 1934

• The Patriot (trailer)
USA • 1928

• The Shop Around the Corner
USA • 1940

• The Smiling Lieutenant
USA • 1931

• The Student Prince in Old Heidelberg
USA • 1927

• Three Women
USA • 1924

• To Be or Not To Be
USA • 1942

• Trouble in Paradise
USA • 1932

• Wenn vier dasselbe tun
Germany • 1917

More Foreign-Language Submissions for the 2006 Oscars

Julie Andrews To Receive SAG Life Achievement Award

Pre-Code Film Series: JEWEL ROBBERY (1932)

Review: AURORA BOREALIS (2006)

Norma Shearer’s LADY OF THE NIGHT on Turner Classic Movies

 

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